Tag: suspense thriller

​Anna is happily married to Will, a wealthy restaurateur, but on his thirtieth birthday she receives a chilling text message that brings a past she thought she had left behind tumbling into the present. As we read about how Anna deals to this new threat to her home and security, we find out what happened to Anna when she was fifteen and embarked on her first serious relationship. It seems her past is not done with her yet.

I became totally engrossed in this suspense thriller from the outset as Anna is a strong narrator and protagonist, that is not to say she isn’t flawed and there were times her calm, intelligent sensibilIty seemed at odds with her passive and somewhat deceptive actions. All the characters in this unpredictable thriller raised my hackles, making this quite a thrilling read.

The last few chapters really amped up my adrenaline and by the end I was rattled enough to have the story in my head for hours. This is my second book from this author and I absolutely loved it. Huge recommendation from me.

​When her neighbour, Bebe, is murdered Helen finds herself and her eccentric lifestyle under scrutiny. can hear and see Bobby her deceased husband, refuses to bathe and groom herself and lives with a number of cats in squalor. After being taken into custody by the police her sister, Pat turns up and although they have been estranged for years feels a sense of responsibility and guilt for not being around. With help from the detective on the case can Bebe’s killer be caught before becomes a target?

Easy to read and get into I found this crime thriller interesting as it gave an account of what it’s like to be a native of Las Vegas. Helen’s eccentricities were a quirky hook in this story and the complexities in her family add another dimension to the thriller. This is quite an even paced read and the characters really grew on me.

The supernatural question of whether Bobby is really seen by Helen makes me want to read more in this series.

Laura loves her son, Daniel, and is excited to have him nearby again as he finishes University and moves back to London to start his new job soon. However, she soon realised she won’t have him to herself when he meets and becomes smitten by the beautiful Cherry. Cherry has always wanted to leave her humble beginnings behind and sees Daniel as a way out of what she considers everyday drudgery.

As Cherry and Laura face off, an avalanche of manipulation ensues driving Laura further from the ones she loves, but how far will Cherry go to get what she wants?

I loved the chess moves played by Cherry and Laura to monopolise Daniel and I think the politics between them kept me turning the pages. Neither character was particularly likeable but Laura had my sympathy throughout this read.

However, what I liked less whilst reading this was a sense of overdramatic events and the only character I really was interested in reading about was Cherry’s mum and I wished there was more of her.

As a psychological thriller this didn’t breach any new barriers but it’s a perfect beach read and is entertaining enough to be recommended.

​Rachel after a whirlwind romance with Jack is pregnant with his baby. The past year has been hard for Rachel after a long-term relationship break-up, her mother’s illness and death and a mysterious event in her medical career. Rachel no longer works as a doctor, but a secretary at a legal firm and is still very much processing everything that has happened to her. One night she sees the notification of an e-mail on Jack’s iPad and becomes suspicious about what he seems to be hiding about himself. Realising she has not met any of his friends, Rachel tries to dig deeper into his life but is this about her paranoia or is he really hiding something?

As much as parts of this book’s did exasperate me, I couldn’t stop reading it as what could have happened that could be so awful that an otherwise affable Jack has gone to such great lengths to hide? As it is narrated from Rachel’s point of view you, as a reader, are at the mercy of her judgment and to complicate matters Rachel is far from transparent herself, with issues relating to her personal and professional life, which become clearer later on in the book.

It would be easy to dismiss Rachel as whiney or paranoid but the reasons behind her insecurity and her beating herself up are caused by significant issues she has dealt with in a short period of time. Her pregnancy puts the pressure on her relationship with Jack to become all it can be before the baby arrives.

I loved the resulting gray areas that presented in the issues both Rachel and Jack faced and the moral of this story, for me, questioned the vilification of people for choices they made with good intentions, whether it’s right to condemn these characters entirely based on events of their past and their need to be accepted for who they are without judgment. Ultimately the book gave me a lot to think about and for that reason I highly recommend it.

The parts that irritated me were dwarfed by how much I enjoyed reading the moral dilemmas faced by Rachel and Jack and apart from saying the book was verging on being a bit too preachy about the medical profession, obviously written by someone who quite rightly has a great respect and admiration for someone close to them who is a doctor, I found Rachel’s past role as a new paediatric registrar odd. Her relationship with her consultant was odd.

Her singling out one patient as a paediatric registrar with most likely not a huge fraction of the knowledge or experience of paediatric oncology that the paediatric oncology consultant above her has (let alone other more experienced registrars in the department and all the support staff oncology units have thankfully) and going against departmental and GMC guidelines undermined the conscientious part of Rachel’s character that would have known that the diagnosis of cancer and the subsequent poor prognosis it may have can lead to catastrophic outcomes. I know this is fiction but to be realistic enough for me, this would have been, in my humble opinion, on the mind of an ethical doctor like Rachel in the way she is written: thorough and obsessive. As much as I liked this book the odd medicine did detract some of the enjoyment for me, but probably wouldn’t bother less obsessive medics and non-medics.

A masked abductor attacks Jason Dessen on his way home one night and sends him to an alternative reality where hike doesn’t marry his wife and his son does not exist. However, Jason has made major scientific breakthroughs and soon learns that a multiverse of alternative realities exist but he only wants to live in one.

The premise of this sci-if thriller is fascinating and one that I have often pondered. Not quite as intriguing as the Wayward Pines books, I still found this an enjoyable read. The paradoxes of Jason’s plight to find his way home and to text his family kept me turning the pages, but this is one I cannot see easily translating to tv or movie.

​Lane went to live with her grandparents after her mother’s death but left their care whilst she was still a teenager, now she returns after getting a call that her cousin, Allegra, is missing. Lane tries to piece together what happened to Allegra in the dysfunction that is her family.

Not an easy read due to the themes of incest and grooming in this hard-hitting novel about a fundamentally flawed family. However, the mystery of what happened to Allegra kept me turning the pages and I read this book in one sitting. As bleak as the story was it did end on a note of hope and the complex characters made it a worthwhile read.

​On a journey to get away from her husband, Audra is on her way to Arizona with her two children, Sean and Louise. She is stopped by a policeman and arrested, but once in the police holding cells she’s told she never had any children with her. Suspicion now runs to Audra being responsible for the disappearance of her own children, but will the more sinister truth come to light.

A taut suspense thriller of corrupt authorities and a shadowy underworld, Audra is the underdog in this thriller, vulnerable with a questionable past which makes her an easy target for the unscrupulous.

​When the adoptive parents of a daughter she gave up contact her, Nora, is stunned to find out that she’s missing. With very little being done to find Bonnie, Nora steps into the breach to track down the teenager herself, but it will require visiting the past and opening wounds that she never truly laid to rest.

Nora is an unusual character and makes questionable judgments but that only seems to make her more intriguing as we piece together her past and present. Living on the fringes of society this flawed protagonist with very little trust to spare cares more than she lets on and is a survivor in the true sense of the word.

An impressive debut and a memorable crime thriller protagonist I look forward to reading again.

Amy returns in book two of this series after leaving her last employers and, taking advantage of the remainder of her private health insurance, goes to rehab. The very publicised death of an old colleague involves her as she is mentioned in his dying words, but why? Matters are complicated further as she teams up with an old flame to get to the bottom of what the man’s dying words meant, but her investigation puts her right inside the hornets nest where no one can be trusted and Amy is in mortal danger. Will she uncover the truth and get out intact?

Absolutely love reading Amy, she’s a character that amuses and intrigues as I’m never quite sure what she’ll do next. A breath of fresh air from the sanitised female protagonist, Amy is proof women can be human, flawed and less moral than Snow White and still be good reading.

I found this second instalment more suspenseful than the first one with a rapid pace that kept me on the edge of my seat, but the book still managed to fill some blanks in Amy’s troubled past. A mystery to keep me guessing as well as revisiting a much loved character, I recommend this rare type of thriller, a finance thriller, to all thriller fans. You won’t be disappointed.

​Detective Stephen Corcoran turns to his sister, Reggie to catch a particularly brutal killer but Reggie’s connection to the killer works both ways and he knows she is watching. Stephen’s cynical partner, Zack is a seasoned detective and both find themselves in a race against time to catch the killer as they protect Reggie.

I loved this crime thriller for its supernatural angle and the banter between the two detectives. Reggie was a compelling character to read and her complicated and strained relationship with her large family also made this read more interesting.

I got so caught up in this book, I couldn’t stop reading it until I had reached the end. The romance between Zack and Reggie was well paced and not at all cringeworthy. A definite hit for me from an author I have not read before.